When Marvel Snap was released last week, I downloaded it primarily out of curiosity about what Ben Broad and his fellow Hearthstone crew did next. The creator of his CCG, the best of games with licenses like Marvel seemed a little straightforward, but Marvel Snap is still amazing in so many good ways.
This is one of the most elegantly simplified designs of card games I’ve seen in years, and I play many card games both in the real world and digitally. I’m a good CCG junkie and the shelves are moaning. No sane person wants to hear the rules explained to him for two hours, so he’s developed a weird fetish for super complicated CCGs that he never plays.
My first impression of Marvel Snap was that this is a snack game. In the first few games, beating some AI opponents seemed almost insultingly simple. The starter deck naturally consists of very simple cards with some clever tricks (such as Iron Man or Nightcrawler, which doubles his overall power on site). who can move once on the board).
But one of Marvel Snap’s great tricks is the avalanche of new cards that you’re about to attack. These simple elements have a huge amount of potential interactions, and the complexity starts to become apparent when you realize that the action can be much more precise than it first appears .
Some of this is small. You can tell which player’s card is “flipped” first in a turn by looking at the player name. The first person to flip this turn is highlighted. I haven’t noticed it for hours, but getting the maximum advantage when the cards are flipped is important for better players.
The secret sauce for this is in three places. To win the match, he must get two of them. These are randomly selected in each game and have different match-changing effects. Whether you win the game or lose the game is entirely based on how your particular deck works with the landscape. It’s a very clever way of introducing a fair amount of complexity and surprises into each match using a simple step-by-step rhythm for each match. Locations are revealed separately at Turns 1, 2 and 3.
The locations exemplify Marvel Snap as a whole. It’s all about squeezing out as much as possible from as few elements as possible, but there’s underground potential in those pieces that makes for a much more engaging match than simply throwing big numbers at each other.
Example: carnage. A fair amount of leveling is required to unlock this 2-cost card. At that point, I was already building a low tier deck built around multiple card buffs. Carnage “eats” all cards placed next to it and absorbs 2 power from each (in addition to its base power of 2). That’s fine, but add a Nova card (1 cost, gives all cards 1 power when destroyed) and Wolverine (2 cost, 3 power, reappears on the board whenever destroyed) Then you play Carnage, full board, destroy Nova, buff every other card you have, buff Wolverine, feed him to Carnage, then multi-buffed Wolverine pops up elsewhere on the board as
Next, we get into the board configuration that helps with this play. A place that has effects such as buffing cards that move there, or returning copies of cards that have been destroyed or played to the hand. My lower tier decks have always focused on synergistic cards but Carnage his combo is the best and with the right setup you can get game winning value .
At that point, you can “snap”. I attend almost every match. This is one of the few opportunities to interact directly with your opponent. A button that, when pressed by one player, doubles his rank up or down amount for both players, depending on win or loss. When both players snap, it doubles from 2 to 4 to 8. This adds a small bluffing element to the game with a touch of chest-thumping. Higher ranks see players retreating by pressing the retreat button. Escape with minimal ranking loss instead of facing later turns. “Hello” is like a micro-taunt he became one.
Not that players need an invitation to turn a harmless phrase into a taunt. Spam’s favorite word is “unbelievable”. (usually after a snap) or “Goo!” which is pretty self-explanatory.
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Ultra Rare Collector’s Variant #17
The next layer above the match is the card theme. Ultimately I prefer cards that I can control, whose effects are triggered by my actions, but if you want to plump up for your Guardians of the Galaxy team, anticipate your opponent’s moves and maximize You’ll find that everything relies on getting value (and Star-Lord’s little “okay” is as close as this game provokes).
The ’90s X-Men (Cable, Bishop, the lot) all slowly build their power, but Onslaught lurks on deck for the finishing blow. Professor X “locks down” the place so neither player can add cards. It’s a cool ability, but in my opinion the card is too risky. Blade and Sword Master packs high power at a low cost, but requires you to discard cards from your hand.
Marvel’s heroes are so cinematically exposed that it’s refreshing to return to the comics and see some of the golden arc recaptured as four or five card deck combinations. comes through the game’s shower of rewards, from cards to various currencies. After a point it slows down noticeably, but I always spend the first few days “upgrading” my cards and trying out new cards. .
I put “upgrade” in horror quotes because what you’re doing isn’t improving the stats or functionality of the cards. It turns out to fit and is delivered in an over-the-top way that really makes you smile. This causes certain card characters his art to extend beyond the frame of the card when Strong Man sounds a frame break. This is followed by 3D, animation, and finally an upgrade to my favorite, his SHINY LOGO.
Basically, making a card more shiny is fun, and anyone who tricked their youth into buying a shiny variation or collector’s item will love this piece.My only on Marvel Snap The real gripe is that the grind becomes annoying, and there are tons of cards that can’t be upgraded further before completing the daily missions.
The first Season Pass, on the other hand, smooths this out and can be said to offer more earnable currency alongside Spider-Man and Symbiote cards. I bought it but felt £9 for the season pass was a bit too much. It offers a huge amount of games for free, but no matter how hard you try in the end.
One downside of Marvel Snap, which from one point of view is hard to criticize, is that the PC client isn’t a great experience. This is first and foremost a mobile game, and the PC version reflects that, presenting the vertical view you get on mobile and packing in big nice bars on either side. Also in-game news updates and inbox.
Be careful with this. The game is in early access on Steam and the developers have specifically addressed the current version. Fewer features than mobileA “full” PC version is due in mid-2023 and will feature a “UI experience developed specifically for PC”, namely the game’s “full screen landscape”. Other features such as in-game news updates, videos, and inbox will also be added.
But let’s not end with a note on the butt. Marvel Snap is one of the most elegant designs, aiming to take the core of the fun of CCG and get to those elements with as few movements as possible. It still amazes me how one card ability can turn a script upside down. The idea of having each match revolve around these three random effects is a great one. If you’ve ever been tempted by the idea of a Hulk variant with a shiny logo, this is the game you’ve been waiting for.
